Love
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 10
By this time it was a quarter past nine; quite early, and yet how late it seemed. Catherine went back to the sofa, and turning out the light on the table by her side, for she was being very cautious this first year of her limited income and not wasting anything, put her feet up and lay in the firelight, feeling a little tired.
Stephen, as a cool refuge from the warmths of Christopher, had been restful, but only up to a certain point. He had provided the sort of relief the cool air of a cellar gives those coming rather blinded out of the heat of the sun, and, like a cellar, he had presently palled. She had long ago found, and it had been greatly to her regret, that it was difficult to keep her eyes open after a short time alone with Stephen. She thought this must be due to his conversation. There was nothing to lay hold of in it. It was bony. One slipped off. Besides, he didn’t talk to her as if she were anything but another bone. Bones to bones; how dreary; how little one likes being behaved to as if one were a bone. Yet he knew now about love, and nobody could hear him preach without being thrilled by his appreciation of it. He appreciated it in his sermons in all its branches. At present in his life there was only one branch really living, and that was married love. All those other loves he praised—brotherly love, which he entreated might continue; the love of friends, surpassing, he declared, in beauty and dignity the love of the sexes; that large love of humanity, which needs must well from every thinking heart—were theories to him. Well, perhaps by sheer talking about them from pulpits to impressed congregations they would gradually become real. One did, in a very remarkable way, talk oneself into attitudes of mind that altered one’s entire behaviour; or was talked into them by somebody else, which was less excellent—in fact, should be guarded against.
She shut her eyes. She was tired.
Little children, love one another ... He could say that beautifully—and how beautiful it was—but he didn’t do it himself. Except Virginia, the rest of the world was at present left out from Stephen’s loving. The exhortation had been for her and Mrs. Mitcham, who had long loved one another in the form of affection and daily mutual courtesies.
Little children, love...
She was tired. She hadn’t walked so fast or so much for ages as she had that afternoon at Hampton Court. And the spring air was relaxing. And Christopher had such long legs, and strode easily over ground that took her innumerable small steps to cover. And, being clearly mad as well, it wasn’t only her feet he had fatigued, but her spirit. Stephen, so passive and indifferent; Christopher, so active and not indifferent enough; and she between them being agreeable, and agreeable, and for ever agreeable. Why did a woman always try, however fruitlessly, as with Stephen, or dangerously, as with Christopher, to be agreeable? She feared it was, at bottom, vanity. Anyhow it was very stupid, when it was so tiring, so tiring...
Little children, love...
She dozed; she more than dozed; she went to sleep. And she hadn’t been asleep five minutes before Christopher came back.
There was her wrap—he hadn’t given her her wrap yet, and found it when he went out where he had dropped it on the carpet outside her door. In any case he had meant to wait in the street till that incredible old son-in-law—that she should dare to try to put him off with stuff about the generations!—had gone, and then see her again unless it was very late. But the wrap made it his duty to see her again; and when he beheld, from the opposite pavement, Stephen emerge and go away at a quarter past nine, he walked up and down for another ten minutes in case the old raven should have forgotten something and come back, and then, the wrap on his arm, went in and up the stairs with all the dignity and composure that legitimate business bestows.
But he was not really composed; not inside. When Mrs. Mitcham opened the door at his ring and, still under the influence of Stephen’s exhortation to love one another, smiled brightly at him, he could hardly stammer out that he had something of Mrs. Cumfrit’s—her wrap——
‘Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll take it,’ said Mrs. Mitcham.
‘Well, but I want to see Mrs. Cumfrit a minute—it isn’t late—it’s quite early—I’ll go in for just a minute——’
And thrusting the wrap into her hand he made for the drawing-room.
She watched him shut the door behind him, and hoped it didn’t matter, her not announcing him. After all, he had but lately left; it wasn’t as if he were calling that day for the first time. On the contrary, this was the third time since lunch that he had come in.
She stood uncertain a moment in the hall, ready to let him out again if he did only stay a minute; then, when he did not reappear, she went back to the kitchen.
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